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Preparing or downloading? iCloud’s odd interface

Maybe iCloud is intended to mystify, to make users think that it works by Apple magic. It certainly behaves at times as if it has a mind of its own, one which doesn’t communicate very clearly what it’s up to.

I have two Macs which share my iCloud Drive: my main working iMac running Sierra, and a MacBook Air running High Sierra. They behave quite differently with respect to the contents of iCloud Drive, in that the iMac seems to keep a complete local copy of that, so copying a file from it is almost instantaneous. But the MacBook Air leaves larger files in the cloud, only downloading them on demand. This is not a behaviour over which I seem to have any control.

Despite that, iCloud likes to give the impression that all files are actually stored locally.

A couple of days ago, I was taking screenshots on the MacBook Air, using apps and documents which I had copied across to iCloud Drive from my iMac. Some of the documents were reasonably hefty, over 40 MB, and the MacBook Air left them in the cloud until I wanted to copy them across to its internal SSD.

When I copied those files, instead of seeing a progress dialog reporting that they were being downloaded from iCloud, the dialog claimed that it was “preparing to move” the document in question. These preparations took some considerable time, during which the Finder’s status bar revealed what was actually taking the time: it was “downloading 1 item”, and reported its progress in doing so. For much of that time, the progress bar in the dialog showed that its ‘preparations’ were actually complete.

iCloud’s logic is that the contents of my iCloud Drive are actually on both Macs, although on my MacBook Air the larger files are really only smaller placeholders. When I want to access one of the files for which only a placeholder is kept locally, iCloud replaces that placeholder with the full file, downloaded from iCloud. That process is termed preparing, even though it is actually downloading.

Without the Finder’s disarming honesty, few users would think that this delay was caused by any ‘preparations’ other than downloading. It’s hard to see why Apple has tried to make this obscure, other than to build an air of general mystery about what is taking place. Apple should replace that progress dialog with the same message given in the Finder status bar, and make the progress bar relate to the progress of downloading.

8Comments

It’s the Finder’s logic of moving a file, not copying it, when I drag to iCloud that disturbs me. The rule of moving intra-drive and copying inter-drive is as old as the proverbial hills; breaking it is dangerous It implies that a file is still available when I grab my MBP and travel in the WiFi-desert when, actually, it isn’t.

I agree completely – and bleated very loudly here about that totally unnecessary betrayal of a consistent interface.
I still hate it, and it still catches me out, even after all this time. It is wrong, thoroughly wrong, demonstrably wrong, and offensively wrong.
So it looks like Apple isn’t going to change it.
Howard.

Sorry if this is a bit naïve, but I was under the impression that unchecking the iCloud Drive option “Optimize Mac Storage” prompted iCloud Drive to download and keep a local copy of *everything*. Is this not true?

You have seen the evidence above – iCloud Drive doesn’t always keep local copies when that box is unchecked. There is no guarantee that an item in your iCloud Drive will be kept locally.
If you think about it, it has to work that way. Let’s say you had 200 GB iCloud storage, with 150 GB of that used. On one Mac, you might have sufficient free local storage that all of that could be kept locally. On a MacBook, you might only have a 256 GB internal SSD, with 50 GB free space. There would then be insufficient local storage to keep your entire iCloud Drive locally, so macOS would have to manage it so that most of your iCloud Drive would be kept in the cloud.
macOS has an assigned maximum quota for iCloud Drive items to be stored locally, and manages that. I look at this in more detail in an article to be published tomorrow (Wed) morning, looking at how iCloud Drive works.
Howard.

Aha, ok. I didn’t see any mention above of whether the “optimize” setting was applied or not on either of the machines you tested. Anecdotally, last night I disconnected my iMac (which has the optimize setting off, and has about 400GB of free drive space) completely from the internet and tried copying about 15GB of randomly-selected files to my desktop. All copied over without incident, as expected. Are you saying that if my iMac had less available drive space, iCloud Drive might silently purge local copies even though the “optimize” setting is not applied?

Yes. macOS – not iCloud – will purge locally-stored copies of files held in iCloud Drive when it decides that it needs to, even when Optimize is turned off.
Local copies of iCloud Drive files exist in two forms: stubs, which are essentially links to the iCloud originals, and full copies. You – and apps – have no control over which form any is in at any given time. macOS manages that for you.
The big difference in Optimize Storage is that that applies not just to those files in iCloud Drive, but to all your Documents folder.
You’ll see how this works in tomorrow’s article, which actually captures the decision made by macOS in one example.
Howard.